DownUnder

With a similar vain to a thread last night i though i would throw up a similar thread as to who is behind DownUnder, and in that and more so negate some of these doom posts floating around and putting some fizz back into the directory bottle.

As most know i am the granpa of the team, and straight up I'm green when it comes to Directories compared to you whippers here and i hope that you can at least learn a little from this old fart in return for the kind help shown by so many to date.

To help paint the picture of how i came to land here ( in short not to bore you ).

Yes i am from Oz, i started work at the age of 10 years and had no choice as my pop was from old school, this first job was selling coke from a caravan, i was literaly thrown in the door, an apron slapped on the back and told to get to work.

From that point i have been involved in and around sales for most of my life to a point i have lost count of the millions sold.

In my younger years i very quikly went from local sales ( funny flash back the first company i worked for i sold 17K in the first week, think that shocked them but within a month had semi's and forklifts dropping gear off ), this led to area sales manager roles and onto state manager roles within a short period of relative time.

Natural progression then saw me move into larger roles and up to national sales manager for a large company where i controlled hundreds of staff, at this time my personal sales exceeded 150K a week, week in week out, these were basic household goodies.

About that time i fell over the computer ( you kids are born with one now ) and fell in love with the excel application, over the years i learnt to master this mathematical rubics cube and started to use this new found tool to increase sales further ( by this time i could get it to talk, sing dance and make my coffee )

What happened from there was strange for a little while as i had many companies all wanting me to write applications for their business and i have done so for that any people i have lost count, My most memorable project was one i done with Cisco and a workflow appplication that took 9 months to write ( i just love the impossible it seems )

During this i worked as National sales manager for a related company, but decided it was time to move back home ( i lived on planes , trains and auto mobiles travelling the country building sales teams )

When i came home i took on purpose the worst job i could find in that i did not want staff or the hassle of staff, i needed time out, so i sold mobile phones to put a few $ in the pocket.

This lasted 4 weeks, when i had a call from a national company who wanted me to come and run the sales for a new business they were setting up, not really in the mood to go back to the slog, i jokingly said if you want me you will need to double that number on the table. that they did straight away.

So more years of planes and fancy hotels and people, it just never seemed to stop ( flashback 2, i remeber i said to the guy before launch, your systems are not strong enough to cope with the sales, his reply don't worry i will sort that , the look on his face when in under 4 weeks i was pulling 200K per week from the ground up and his system falling down = priceless )

Ok keeping it short i decided id had enough and thought i was coming home to a quieter life, wrong again i had another company call me so i upted the numbers again, but at that very same time a second company called , it rains it pours so i kept the raised numbers but now decided to add a few cars to the list for good measure, and yes back into it again.

Even though i call myself old i am still quite young and not even at the half way mark or close to it, but now i live semi retired and run systems and sales for a national company with around 500 staff.

This still does not explain how and why i landed here, so to put that into perspective, my good freind and i aslo had our own company and that company was doing ok and we really just mucked around with it, but during that time i was the mug who set about building our site, during that time and being a greenhorn ( not knowing the directory business existed at all ) i took some of the people that were involved with our company ( suppliers etc ) and listed them up in directory fashion i suppose without really paying attention to what i was doing.

from there some funny things happened in that i started to get emails from people, some i knew from my many years dealing with business and others more stragley that i did not know, they had one thing in common, all of them asked me if i could list their business in my list, hey why not it's a bit of fun.

Then one day my phone rang it was from a major Australian company and guess what, the same thing this company wanted me to list their business up as well.

Now not being the brightest cookie in the barrel, I started to think wow i have been slugging away for years and now this ? surley i could make a buck, ( i am not a QBC person so no side remarks ) i know just about every one in every outhouse in the land or have a contact with them and just maybe.

This all happened over 12 months ago, and at the time i said to my partner, have a look here, i think there is something in this and perhaps our company should focus energy in this direction, He laughed and said no way, but the thought stayed with me.

With a few years under my belt i decided to walk away from the idea for a few months and then re visit the idea and then if i felt the same way look at it further.

Waste of time that was, each day i was planning drafting and exploring options, and hit my partner again but again he did not see any potential but this old dog did, so from there we seperated the company ( on very good terms ) and i created a new company, i sold another business that i also owned to allow me 100% of my free time to devote to the planning of this business and have spent nearly 12 months doing so.

Currently i am days away from getting my Beta version up and running and i will pop it up in the near future, you may ask why a beta version, the answer is simple the directory is all made from the ground up, there are no free scrpits, templates or anything and even though i have mountains of drafts , tests i want to test it in real life to allow for any changes or nips n tucks to be implimented, and to save on expensive remakes.

As i feel confortable with sections of the directory i will upgrade that section to Alpha mode and continue.

In a way i am glad i fell over this forum after planning was done, as i may have opted for a product available now ( that is not a bad thing ) but in doing that would have not built the model i have now.

As mentioned I am not the smartest cookie, but i have invested a lot of sleeples hours, money and energy to this point and for all of those people saying or hanging negatives on this industry, i hope my story can give a little hope to all who are unsure.

I have developed a company, spent craploads to date with more to come, will be staffing up on a large scale ( as we move into alpha mode ) and i hope that this old dog can bring a new angle to the directory business.

During Beta mode 90% of my directory will not even be seen and will be tested in the back rooms of cyberspace and i will not be talking about a lot of the things i will be doing until they happen, the reasons for this is not secretive as much as these plans may change during development and so therefore are pointless.

What you will see is some old school thinking applied to a modern medium, where i will bring my sales skills from the field and apply them to the directory, i hope i can say i understand business people and know what they want and through this medium i will be testing stuff way outside of what has been done before, ( i have not seen any directory so far that matches the model built and to go into play although it functions as all directories in its basic workings ) some are close but i only really have seen directories after my design was completed.

I look forward to working with the many good people here to help me out with Directory knowledge and in return hope that with my skills can pass some outcomes of this journey back as re payment.

as mentioned my first goals are to work from Beta to Alpha mode, but i will also tell or let out of the bag some other first steps.

My first goal ( and forgive me for talking straight ) is to dispell the myth for these new players that you need to submitt to 500 spammy free directories to start a business, and to do this i will will refuse to submit to one of them, but may choose several very good quality directories, the rest i will do it my way, old school, and my first target ( regardless of time as i plan to start slow and walk ) is that 20K uniuque visitors a day, that seemed like a goal worth starting with and is a personal one.

I wished i could open up more but must restrain but i leave you for now with a personal thankyou to everyone here who have made me feel welcome and helped this greenhorn, and if anybody tells you the directory business is dead, tell em their dreaming.

 

Interesting read, now 2 questions

1, How are you intending to get 20k visitors per day? SERPS, PPC, advertsing ?

2, Can you get the income from these activities to fund your expenses? especially if you're doing PPC or advertising

I kind of doubt that more than a handfull of directories here net more than $500 per month, net of expenses that is

Those that can manage that figure probably already have TBPR and are essentially trading off TBPR

 

One at a time, in honesty, i already have a huge network built over the years ( in many countries ) , i will use this combined with advertising, and some other ideas i wish to hold private for now. as for the SERPS etc i will let my web team look after that side of things and i will basicly run on their advice, its what they are best at, my role is out in the hustings.

I wont say exactly what countries / states etc but i already have very good managers in place who are very good at what they do, and i will expand on this as i move forward when the time is right.

the 20K was a figure thrown up in another post, being one for a challenge i am taking it on. LOL see you in 5 years, i don't expect it to be easy nor a cake walk.

That is another good question and one i will hope to answer soon but i will always answer honestlly, i suspect that it will take some time to build an income, but i also walk into this with no expectations or any vivid dreams.

In relation to some sites i have built this i suppose is cheap with 120K spent on another system.

In that this is my sea change in carrers, where i plan this income to match and exceed my current income, but do not as mentioned need it or rely on it.

I will know more next week when my business managers come in and we do a final run of numbers and projections. I would not be this far into it if a saw to many drawdowns.

 

I thought during the wait for the Beta version I would share our Logo and Name for your comment ( nothing to see at the url ) Charlie site is closed.

The Picture is not important, but i will share what will happen with our banner / s.

Any Person can submit their art work, be they an amature photographer, a logo designer, a grahics designer, photoshop art or any similar project, we don't even care if it is a picture drawn by a 3 year year old.

The pictures submitted must however match the catagory chosen, for example if you are in Auto > Rare Cars , you can supply a picture to match and we like it, it will display in our banner (in that section) for a set time on rotation ( say 1 month ), also included with that will be a free link back to the artists site and or accolades to the person.

This will allow the site to become dynamic in its look and feel with each page changing and something new happening all of the time, and we hope to have some simply stunning art work flowing through from the pro's down to the kids at home presenting pictures for the childrens section.

Other news more delays today but all will be good. Enjoy

 

Great story m8, and looking forward to follow this

/harry